Variable Thesaurus - International Arctic Systems for Observing the Atmosphere
Original (non-English) name
Acronym
Variable Thesaurus - IASOA
Citation
Abstract
IASOA has concatenated the measurement vocabularies (mostly non-overlapping) of three major atmospheric & climatological measurement programs (GAW, DOE, GCW) into a single, comprehensive measurement thesaurus covering relevant observations from IASOA observatories. Each of the vocabularies follows a 3-tiered hierarchy from "category" -> "sub-category" -> "measurement". We use this system for organizing search results in our data portal. We also allow for the addition of synonyms to each of the measurements. Synonyms give us flexibility when ingesting and sorting metadata contributions from archives with their own distinct vocabulary. Importantly, synonyms also allow us to map to the expanding field of non-ambiguous cf standard names.